“Future-Proofing” Libraries Ideas…08.19.08

19082008

Here are some of the “Future-Proofing” comments from the recent article in Library Journal that I found insightful:

“Any organization that has a goal of being ‘future-proof’needs to focus on its staff above all else. Plans, goals, and strategies are great—but who’s going to implement those great strategies? If staff are not capable, the best-laid plans will find themselves by the wayside. Here are some thoughts about hiring and training future-proof staff:

Hire creative people: You know the kind. They’re the ones who always look at a problem with a unique perspective and bring new and better ideas to the table. They can usually solve a problem multiple ways, on any budget, and with flair. Instead of hiring for specific, immediate needs, hire creative people who can adapt and improve for many needs, now and in the future.

Hire passionate individuals: Don’t hire people who want a job. That’s all they’ll ever do. Instead, hire people who eat, breathe, and sleep libraries, information, and community—and want to do those things at your library. These are the people who will relish finding new, innovative ways to connect their community to the library.

These creative, passionate librarians will need a new type of skill set to be future-proof. These skills have nothing to do with performing a successful reference interview or memorizing AACR2. Instead:
They need to be adept at change. Change will happen in a future-proof library, probably rapidly at times. Future-proof librarians must be not just comfortable with change but able to lead it.

They must be computer/social networking experts. Blogs have been around for over 11 years, social networks for even longer. Computers have been in our libraries for more than 20 years. Why are we still hiring people who can’t use these tools? Why have we kept people on staff who can’t use them? Our library world is quickly changing, and computers and online communities are a major component of future-proofing a library. If we were a Taxi company, we wouldn’t hire someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn to drive a new transmission, would we?

They need to scan the horizon. They should be able to look out at their little part of the library world, see what’s developing, and be able to figure out how to implement it.

Finally, and probably most important, the future-proof library and the future-proof librarian need one simple thing to succeed: they need their library administration to lead the way. That means that all the stuff I just said above…needs to be there already.”—David Lee King

“The best way to future-proof libraries is not by electronically reimagining our most valuable attributes in a collective attempt to cheat obsolescence. Our insurance is going to come from a much more basic place—we have to turn inward, understand why libraries have been such fabulously lasting cultural institutions, and reflect on how best to transfer this to the modern information climate.

Libraries represent thoughtfulness, peace, and possibility, and we should strive to keep them as transparent and accessible as possible. The profit imperative increasingly shapes the way that information is organized and accessed, but libraries can thrivesimply because we exist in opposition to this model. A truly national and effective libraries-are-viable-and-valuable advertising campaign that takes on grassroots and major media tactics would be incredibly worthwhile.

It’s easy to recognize the tone this message might take when you consider the movements that are creating change on a broad scale. The social capital of libraries speaks to the same populist, sustainable spirit that drives the open source, open access, slow food, local, DIY, and green movements, the only difference being that we’ve been at it for millennia. Libraries are the quintessence of the sustainable information movement, and we create community spaces that simultaneously validate the universal human need for the social, the intellectual, and the thrifty. We also have an unbelievable wealth of dedicated staff for whom libraries are symbolic of the greatest good, drawn together in a vocational community of practitioners that could hardly be more enthusiastic or protective of the services we provide. It’s critical that we teach our users that they can believe in libraries like they can believe in any other good cause, because library sustainability is essentially in their hands. It is our responsibility to make sure that they have enough reasons to understand, appreciate, and advocate for us.”—Char Booth

“Future-proofed libraries will be flatter, more transparent institutions, free of hierarchal organization. They will constantly reevaluate space, service, and user engagement. I watch the Darien Library, CT, very closely as a way to see future ideas put into play now: circulation staff blogging and selecting materials, innovations with reference services, and a new building that will inspire the community as well as the library world. I watch the new spaces at libraries like Loyola, McMaster, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina State to see what the idea of the commons means to students and faculty. The librarians and staff creating these spaces realize the future is more about collaboration and space than rows of stacks.
The future-proof library will encourage my heart—to grow, explore, learn, and experience. It will know me and provide information I didn’t even know I needed. I will experience information in new ways, inside the library or wherever the library happens to be: on my “digital lifestream” device, via my home information/entertainment devices, and via the cloud of data that will be available to me wherever I go.—Michael Stephens